1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to electronic systems, and more particularly, reliability calculations and fault isolation in electronic systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
One important metric for computers and other types of electronic systems is reliability. Customer expectations for product reliability are a critical factor that must be considered for a company that produces electronic systems. As such, an important part of the design process may involve the performance of reliability calculations.
Reliability calculations include several factors. One such factor is MTBF, or Mean Time Between Failures. MTBF may be considered as one measure of product reliability, indicating the number of hours a part or system is expected to operate before failing. In general, higher MTBF figures indicate a more reliable system. One method of calculating MTBF may be found by taking the inverse of the sum of all the system part failure rates, or 1/(Σ part failure rates).
Determining the individual part failure rates for an electronic system may involve partitioning the system into its constituent cards buses, power supplies and other electrical and mechanical devices. The failure rates from the constituent system parts may be used to derive an overall failure rate. However, such a methodology may not always yield enough information to accurately predict system reliability. Furthermore, this methodology does not identify any information about the likelihood of a specific system component being the source of a particular system failure.